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Elvis Costello - (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes

Elvis Costello - (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: My Aim Is True
Released: 1977

(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes Lyrics

Oh, I used to be disgusted
And now I try to be amused
But since their wings have got rusted
You know, the angels want to wear my red shoes
But when they told me 'bout their side of the bargain
That's when I knew that I could not refuse
And I won't get any older, now that angels want to wear my red shoes

Oh, oh, I was watching while you're dancing away
Our love got fractured in the echo and sway
How come everybody wants to be your friend?
You know that it still hurts me just to say it

Oh, I know that she's disgusted (oh, why's that?)
Because she's feeling so abused (oh, that's too bad)
She gets tired of the lust (oh, I'm so sad)
But it's so hard to refuse
Can you say that I'm too old
When the angels have stolen my red shoes?

Oh, oh I said, "I'm so happy I could die"
She said, "Drop dead," then left with another guy
That's what you get if you go chasing after vengeance
Ever since you got me punctured, this has been my sentence

Oh, I used to be disgusted
But now I try to be amused
But since their wings have got rusted
You know, the angels want to wear my red shoes
But when they told me 'bout their side of the bargain
That's when I knew that I could not refuse
And I won't get any older, now that the angels want to wear my red shoes

Oh, I won't get any older, now the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels want to wear my red shoes

Writer/s: COSTELLO, ELVIS
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes

In this song, Elvis makes a deal with the angels, who have come down to Earth because their wings have rusted. Needing footwear, they grant Costello immortality in exchange for his red shoes.

His estranged girlfriend, however, is not impressed and doesn't share in his enthusiasm, telling him to drop dead and leaving the club with another guy.

Costello wrote the song backward, starting with the club scene where the girl leaves with another guy. From there, he worked in the idea of making the deal with the angels so he stops aging. He was just 22 years old at the time, and wasn't sure why he was writing about not getting older.

Costello wrote this in 10 minutes while on the Inter-City train to Liverpool between the Runcorn and Lime Street stations. He didn't have a recorder with him, so he kept the song in his head until he got off the train and made it to his mother's house, where he found one of his old guitars and played the song over and over until he had it recorded to memory.

Nick Lowe produced the album. Costello had recently signed his record deal and didn't have a backing band, so Lowe brought in the group Clover. Alex Call, who was their lead singer, told us the story: "Clover got together in the late '60s. It was four of us, we made two albums on Fantasy - we were buddies with Creedence Clearwater Revival. We got dropped, and then Huey Lewis and our keyboard player, Shawn Hopper, joined the band and we kind of made another run at it. In the mid-'70s, we were going down to Los Angeles a lot and playing a club called The Palamino.

The Palamino was this great Country and Western place. We were more of a rock band really, but we kind of were country. At one gig, Nick Lowe was there with Paul Carrack. Nick had been in the band Brinsley Schwartz, and The Brinsleys were big fans of the early Clover albums. So one thing led to another, and Jake Riviera, who was Elvis' manager, signed us to come to England, and we signed with Phonogram over there, which is Mercury here. Elvis Costello was at that time Dec McManus, he was using his real name. He was just this mild-mannered, meek little songwriter who would hang out around Stiff Records, which was our management office. Elvis once said, 'Man, I wish I could sing like you.'

He went to cut some demos, and they used Clover. Huey and I did not participate in those because they had no need for us, but I remember they went and cut at this little place called Pathways - a little 8-track studio so small that all you had just enough space to play your instrument. They went in that first session, and in one session they cut 'Alison' and 'Red Shoes' and 'Less Than Zero,' these classic songs. I remember hearing them at this rock 'n' roll house we lived in outside of Headley, South of London called the Headley Grange House. John McFee brought back a reel-to-reel tape on one of those old Wollensak tape recorders. He played this stuff, and I mean, I was ready to quit after hearing that - it was so astounding. They did like three 8-12 hour sessions, and that was My Aim Is True.

That is a classic record, just unbelievable. We were managed by the same guys and we hung out a lot with Nick. Nick produced a lot of our early sessions there. We made two albums with Mutt Lange, and nothing happened with the band. We came close in England to breaking a single, but it didn't work and we ended up breaking up." (Check out our interview with Alex Call.)

In 2011, Costello performed this on Sesame Street as "The Monster Went and Ate My Red 2." He had his numbers lined up from 1-10, but Cookie Monster (who does eat other things beside cookies, by the way), kept eating the red number 2, creating a counting problem.

This song tells a strange story, but not nearly as strange as the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes, which inspired a Kate Bush song of the same name. In that story, a girl puts on a pair of red shoes that make her dance uncontrollably. She can't take them off, so she has her feet cut off, only to have the shoes continue to dance with her amputated feet inside them.

Elvis Costello - Less Than Zero

Elvis Costello - Less Than Zero Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: My Aim Is True
Released: 1977

Less Than Zero Lyrics

Calling Mr. Oswald with the swastika tattoo
There is a vacancy waiting in the English voodoo
Carving "V" for "vandal" on the guilty boy's head
When he's had enough of that, maybe you'll take him to bed
To teach him he's alive before he wishes he was dead

[Chorus:]
Turn up the TV, no one listening will suspect
Even your mother won't detect it, so your father won't know
They think that I've got no respect but
Everything is Less Than Zero
Hey, oo hey-ey
Hey, oo hey-ey

Oswald and his sister are doing it again
They've got the finest home movies that you have ever seen
They've got a thousand variations, every service with a smile
They're gonna take a little break and they'll be back after a while
Well, I hear that South America is coming into style

[Chorus:]

A pistol was still smoking, a man lay on the floor
Mr. Oswald said he had an understanding with the law
He said he heard about a couple living in the USA
He said they traded in their baby for a Chevrolet
Let's talk about the future, now we've put the past away

[Chorus:]
Hey, oo hey-ey
Hey, oo hey-ey...

Writer/s: COSTELLO, ELVIS
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Less Than Zero Song Chart

This is a scathing attack on Oswald Mosley, a politician who was popular in England at the time. Mosley, who died in 1980, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists.

This was Costello's first single - it was only issued in Europe. At the time, he had a day job working on a computer at Elizabeth Arden cosmetics.

According to Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock and Soul, The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever , the song is about a young couple making out in one of their parents' houses, while 1930s British fascist leader Oswald Moseley and his sister babble poison on TV, angling for a comeback in the era of the National Front.

American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis named his first novel, the nihilistic, drug-fuelled Less Than Zero after this song. He told the NME August 7, 2010: "Why did I name my first book after an Elvis Costello song? Who knows? I was working on this project starting when I was 16 and it was the Less Than Zero project. I was like most white, upper-class educated boys: I was obsessed with Elvis Costello. That was his main audience in the US. That title seemed very evocative to me. It had various other titles, but Less Than Zero ultimately seemed like the best title for the book, even though I had this much older professor who really loved the book but tried to dissuade me from using that title because he thought it was lame. He suggested Winter Vacation. Elvis Costello became the man for me for very many years. And then he didn't. Which happens, it happens to a lot of people, it's just the nature of things. Very few people sustain massive careers for a long time."

When he recorded the My Aim Is True album, Costello had not yet formed his backing band The Attractions, so he used members of an American group called Clover as his musicians:

John McFee - guitar
Sean Hopper - keyboards
Johnny Ciambotti - bass
Mickey Shine - drums
Stan Shaw - organ

Clover disbanded in 1978; McFee joined The Doobie Brothers and Hopper formed Huey Lewis and the News.

When Costello appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1977 (filling in for the Sex Pistols, who were denied entry into the US), it was decided that he would perform this song. Elvis, however, had other ideas. After playing some of "Less Than Zero," he halted the performance and played the unreleased "Radio Radio" instead, earning him a ban from the show that lasted until 1989, when he returned as musical guest.

Costello had no interest in playing "Less Than Zero" for an American audience (especially on a late-night comedy show), since its subject matter was decidedly English.

Like "Watching The Detectives," this song has reggae overtones. Costello was influenced by the first Clash album, which used a lot of reggae sounds.